


And Screaming it to Death

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mark of Cain, Season/Series 10, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 04:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3677307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a dream, and a wide, screwy dream, not a sexy one or a scary one or a blazing hellscape. Just your typical, meandering strangeness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Screaming it to Death

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm is intended.

This is really weird and it's getting on his nerves. But Dean can't get the taste of this damn idea out of his mouth. It's stuck there like the hook of an uninvited song.

It was a dream, and a wide, screwy dream, not a sexy one or a scary one or a blazing hellscape. Just your typical, meandering strangeness. Like, it started in a cubical in an office. And there was some stuff. A toaster that spit out full egg salad sandwiches. For some reason the office building was located in a treehouse. He sat down in the lobby on a pile of pillows and played music on instruments he's never touched before. Everyone around him was unfamiliar and dressed for summer. He had conversations about curry and french fries. Someone let their pet turtle crawl on his knees. And, at some point, a woman sat down, cross-legged next to him. They each had their preferred pillows pulled up around them like makeshift seats or little forts. And she pulled his head to her shoulder and ran her fingers through his hair again and again.

Dean had awoken so _soothed_ and content that it almost bothered him.  
If he weren't busy being soothed and content.

He made a big, decadent breakfast, sugared the hell out of his coffee, and sort of floated through the morning until it was time to leave the safety of the bunker for a long drive toward danger.

He was at a bar, avoiding Sam later that night, and this idea arose. Started up like an itch between the shoulder blades.

_How could you possibly ask some stranger to do this_ , he wondered.

Because he wanted to hit on somebody and he didn't want to be alone for the night. But it wasn't about sex.

Increasingly, it wasn't about sex. Somewhere along the line, that stopped bothering him.

As a living, breathing weapon, he can't afford to want to be with everybody. He can't use people, it just doesn't sit right. And he can't fuck without a kiss on the mouth. Without pulling in close a body and fitting to whatever shape it comes in. He can't get all up on somebody's flesh without ending up kissing thighs and rubbing his lips over a silky curve and mouthing at an imperfect pout of belly and just blissing out on the things about them that nobody ever gets to know. Except the people they let between their legs.

He's reached an age where it doesn't bother him to be... maybe, slowing down? And an age where he realizes how raw his skin is from letting so many in under it.

He wants it, still.  
He doesn't want endless mornings after nights before.

Resigned as he is that there will be no endless mornings at all, it seems cruel to both himself and the people he's eyeing up to try to engage them in anything but sex, anyway.

Detached sex it is, then. Maybe he'll go down on somebody and hope they grab fistfuls of his hair in the process.

It's kinda sick, in a way. That that's all he wants.

The phantom touch, though. It doesn't go away.

He's getting moody about it after a few days. Face propped on his hand, half-heartedly flipping through a lore book in the motel kitchenette. Wishing he was home. Wondering if he started giving Sam noogies again if he'd attempt to return the gesture or just berate Dean for starting childish bullshit.

Sam can't be involved in this.  
But maybe.  
But no.

It's weird.

Er than usual.

Knock at the door and it's too early for the Chinese they ordered to already be here so Dean just glares at it and Sam sighs, flips the safety off his gun.

"Oh," he says after peeking out.

And opens the motel door to Cas.

"I thought you were in Utah," Sam says.

"Dead end," Cas does that wry, of-course thing with his face. Dean can't tell if he's starting to look like he's tired again. He hopes he isn't. One crisis at a fucking time, thanks.

Anyway, the Mark is layered under too much of Dean's deep-thinking crap lately. Focus and tense-and-release and reminding himself he's a weapon, a weapon, a bloody, cruel, awful weapon. And he doesn't need to show it. So sit down and shut up.

And the head scratching thing. The echo of the dream creeps down his neck sometimes and he tingles, gets a little shivery.

Now, Cas.

Hmmm.

Sam invites him in on the case. Gets him up to speed. And then the food arrives and they adjourn to the other side of the room. Sam perches on the end of his bed and Cas joins Dean on the couch, though he won't accept food. (Good sign: he doesn't need food yet.)

Dean's still twisting the last noodles around a box of lo mein, kinda frowning and looking inward, gauging his level of hunger and exhaustion and finding them out of whack, as per usual, when Sam rises and says something about a shower and the room clears out of other inhabitants very suddenly. And this red, gaudy room and this awful, lumpy couch are full of only Cas's uncomfortable presence and whatever on-the-edge feeling the guys seem to be getting around him when it's clear that Dean's feeling _off_.

It's becoming apparent. Dean's noticed it. They can tell when he's having an internal exchange with the thing possessing him and there's no true light behind his eyes. And he knows what passes over and around him when he does it: Nervousness. Waiting. Watching.

Readying themselves for the moment when Dean slips away and the black slips back, completely replacing the light of the soul within him. They're looking for the signs and the more they don't find them, the more worried glances Sam and Cas exchange.

But Dean rises back into the moment and sets the cold, sticky carton aside.

"You been keepin' busy?" he asks just to ask.

Cas nods. And wipes his palms on his slacks.

That's new.

Another nervous gesture, but not related to Dean's Maniac Meter pinging.

Maybe humanity slips into Cas in odd little pieces.

He watches Cas's hands. He watches his long fingers until Cas kind of moves to get up and the hand that Dean throws out to stop him is way too abrupt.

"Sorry," he apologizes immediately. And he's here. He's present. He looks for Cas to meet his eyes and he swallows down the little jolt of fear that movement spiked in his own self and he must look fucking _pathetic_ all of a sudden.

Because Cas sinks back into the couch, his eyes going puppy-dog soft. "It's alright, Dean," he says, and means it. "How are you? How have you been handling everything lately?"

Dean pulls in a deliberate breath and exhales from deep in his belly. He watches his hand fall from Cas's shoulder to the couch between them.

"I can't get these... images out of my head."

Cas understands replaying all those damaging thoughts for yourself. He has his own. He doesn't move, doesn't nod, doesn't prompt. He listens.

"They're different from-- well. First of all," Dean restarts, "there's the harsh stuff. When people test my patience and I can't," he extends a hand like reaching, like grabbing, "quite. Can't quite."

He can't find his patience, in truth. No matter how vast an ocean of it has filled up into what he considers his old age.

He can't find patience, so he replaces it with pauses. He stops when he can't reach where he wants to go -- whether that place is violent or calm. He just dead stops.

Dean is stopped now. Explaining to Cas. He doesn't know if he wants to spill all the gory details of what his head conjures up and how he's dealing with that. It takes a lot of restraint and more hiding within himself than he's used to.

And a lot more pulling away from people.

Cas is so close. So close, right now.

Dean is stopped and Cas is _infinite_ in his patience. He only watches.

Dean slowly drops his head to Castiel's shoulder, like how the woman in the dream had pulled him down to her own. And maybe Cas will get it. Probably he won't, not without all his superpowers.

He can feel the coat against his ear. The warmth of a human body underneath it. He presses his ear completely against Cas's hard shoulder and he listens to the breath in him for a long moment.

He thinks that Cas is gonna reach up. He really does. But when his hand comes across, it knots in Dean's button-up and over his heart.

Cas smells like his own car. And the road. The wind whipping off the wheat fields and just _life_. Life like Dean doesn't want to give up living and he can barely breathe thinking about that. So he stops again. And inhales again. And it feels like it's gonna be useless, but it's productive.

"I can't get things out of my head."

"I know," Cas aims for quiet and soothing.

"No, I mean, like, things I want."

Cas is quiet for a long moment. "Things you still want to do? Dean, you can do them all. You're going to be alright," he insists.

That's not what he means at all but Sam doesn't take long in the shower and Dean would rather fake sleep across the room than admit aloud that they're right to be worried about him. They're right to speak of it in whispers. They're right to give him the false hope that he'll be okay.

It might be harder on them in the long run, but it gets the job done at present.

«»

After the fight and subsequent monster kill, Dean exiles himself to the back seat of Cas's car. It's closest and if he starts losing his cool and actually tearing things apart, he chooses to trash Cas's junker instead of the Impala.

He walks a straight line out of the charred and blood-spattered room and out the door and across the dirt road to the car and climbs in the back seat and shuts the door and inhales and exhales and inhales and exhales and inhales and exhales. He reminds himself that he is a monster, too. He reminds himself that he will be on that chopping block someday. He reminds himself of the awful things he has done. He reminds himself of Cain's bullshit prophecy. He reminds himself that he must not be responsible for the deaths of the people who matter.

He is at a table peeling the husks from corn. He is in his own dark little pocket of the universe and nobody can find him here.

Until the door clicks and creaks and slams back shut and the seat slants down a little to his right.

Dean does not open his eyes. He is weak and unstoppably murderous. He must have something. He must have one fucking half inch of peace in his life.

He scoots to the side and he crawls into the small stretch of the back seat and he puts his head down on Cas's thigh. He's not even fucking playing around right now. He feels Cas's hand tap, then touch down on his shoulder, unsure. And he grabs that hand and puts it directly on his own head.

Cas's fingers sink into Dean's hair and he could whine and moan and curve his spine in relief. He nudges his nose into Cas's thigh and breathes, breathes.

These fingers are not what he expected. Not sensuous and scratching. Not an affectionate scritch and trail of nails. Just a card and pull. One sweeping thumb at the back of his neck.

Not what he expected at all.

Then Cas reaches over and adds his other hand and suddenly Dean lets himself get lost in the pleasure of it.

It's not fulfilling like he thought. It's better. Different.

Cas cradles his head and sweeps his fingers through Dean's hair with no discernable pattern of repetition. Exploratory. His fingers stray as far down as Dean's collar. They curve the edge of Dean's ear and he swears he could fucking turn his face down and bury his teeth in Castiel's leg. He wants more.

He wants more of this. To be in Cas's capable, powerful hands. He needs it so much he'll just lie down and take it.

It dawns on him slowly.

Slowly.

The bliss of having the touch he's been aching for. It helps things to sink in. But slowly. And Dean thinks about how there's nobody else in the world he'd want this from. Not one-night people, not new people, not people he'd discover tomorrow and decide to settle down with and clean himself up for.

He can trust Castiel. And Cas wants what's best for him. He's pretty sure he does. He can test this theory. All he has to do is ask.

"What do you want?" Dean says on the end of a breath, heat of it ghosting across Cas's thigh.

"I want peace. I don't want you to suffer anymore. I don't want Sam or myself to suffer anymore. I want peace," Cas repeats, emphasizing it with a toe-curlingly great fingertip rub into the side of Dean's head.

He thinks of Cain and how someone who loved him once told him to stop fighting.

"Tell me what to do," Dean pleads. Fucking pleads, curling a hand around Cas's knee and it might be too tight but there's gotta be enough angel left in him to handle it. There just has to be because Dean can't end up hurting him anymore. "Tell me what you want me to do."

Cas is quiet for a long moment before his fingers stop, simply settled into the hair, palm warming the curve of Dean's skull.

"If I could have anything," he says, long and slow, "if I could ask anything of you? I would want you to fight."

It is unexpected. And it sinks into Dean's skin like rays of sunlight.

"You keep escaping into yourself," Cas explains. "You keep stopping and hiding and now you live in a place where your doom feels inevitable and it's not, Dean, it's just not. You don't have to get used to feeling like this. You can fight." He uses his hand to turn Dean's head and Dean opens his eyes, looks up and Cas's words sing right through him. "We can stop this. Get rid of the Mark. I don't want you to lose control of yourself. I don't want you to _give up_ control of yourself. I want you to fight."

To fight but not slay. To keep turning away from carnage, find himself when he looks into himself, not just listen to what the Mark of Cain has to say.

"Make me promise," Dean demands.

Cas squints. But says, "Promise me you'll keep fighting, Dean."

Dean sinks his fingers into Castiel's hair and pulls his head down. Their foreheads hit a little hard, a thunk against the pounding of heart in his ears. "I promise."

The great thing about a curse, it seems, is that you cannot disobey.

**Author's Note:**

> ([x](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Put_a_Spell_on_You)) & ([x](http://apocalypse-patisserie.tumblr.com/post/115448828378/more-if-any-of-you-were-wondering-where))


End file.
